Modern Criticism of Tess

Maybe I'll get the formatting right for once. Again though, the page numbers don't match up with the hard-copy of the book, but I'm certain that we're reading the same articles. Also, I can't figure out how to a block quote on Blogger's interface =(

    I chose to focus on Virginia Woolf's review of Hardy's writing as a whole. Having recently finished reading one of her own books, I was interested in how she would view Hardy's writing. Somewhat surprisingly, a lot of the things she said line up with what we discussed in class earlier today. Overall, she holds him in very high esteem, saying that it took him a while to find the right way of writing, but that talent was obvious from his first novel. She also praises his ability to create strong, complex character who exist outside of their interactions with the main character and who are very rarely mono-faceted - a trait for which we also praised Eliot. However, she notes -though not disdainfully- that Hardy lacks the "concentration and completeness" for which some of his contemporaries were loved. These oversights mainly deal with love and the human heart.

    With regards to Hardy's prose, Woolf states: "That he was a poet should have been obvious," and this sets the tone for a lot of her praise of the novelist. She compliments the way he is able to focus on small details with such precision as wasn't seen before. However, there's one phrase that I think is more important than all the others.

   "It is as if Hardy himself were not quite aware of what he did, as if his consciousness held more     than he could produce, and he left it for his readers to make out his full meaning and to supplement it from their own experience."

   This ties back to our group's discussion on how so many scenes, particularly those that we'd view as crucial (such as the rape) have the details obscured and glossed over, and we as readers are only given the outcome. Woolf cites Hardy as having said "a novel 'is an impression, not an argument,'" and thus praises his ability to not preach to his audience, and instead lets them draw their own conclusions. As a reader and as a writer, I personally admire his ability to do so. He's able to say something that's important, without informing us that it's important.

   While I don't understand any of Woolf's references to Hardy's other works, it's clear that this is a recurring trait of his work. In part, that's probably what made Tess a more enjoyable read than the other books (at least to me), as well as his less pedantic prose. We've talked a great deal, both in class and on our blogs, about Tess as a likable character and stronger heroine, and how our opinions there don't exactly match up with those of Hardy's contemporary audiences. I appreciate the fact that his ambiguity allows us to draw those sorts of conclusions.

  

Blog 6 - Tess 1

I apologize in advance that I can't properly cite page numbers - I have a      different version of the book and they don't match up with the class's.

As expected after the introduction to Hardy, critics had very mixed feelings   about Tess as a novel and as a heroine. Nearly all of the reviews describe the book as unconventional, or some synonym thereof, but disagree about whether    that's a good thing or not. Some sources, such as the Illustrated London News, laud Hardy's ability to make conventional readers think differently. Others,   like The Saturday Review, call it "an unpleasant story told in an unpleasant   way."

Like my group mates stated, one of the main issues with the books, as far as   contemporary critics were concerned, was the character of Tess herself. They   found her unlivable and, apparently, "The most disliked heroine in literature." I disagree and found her to be one of the more believable ones, and liked her more for it. Dorothea's issues largely stemmed from her desire to do good, even at personal cost. Alternatively, there was Mary, who relied a lot upon others to do things for her. Tess was a strong heroine, often taking matters into her own hands, and had her strengths as well as flaws. While her problems, such as murder, aren't exactly the sort that can be explained away or justified, we can at least understand them. Similarly, her returning to Alec, an action that    earned her a lot of flak, is yet another that's believable. As Lauren said, it makes her seem more like a person and less like a bundle of traits given a     name. Overall, I feel like Tess was the most 21-century heroine of the group,  and maybe that's why I like her more. If that's the case, then it's definitely understandable why her readers at the time, did not. 

Blog... 5? Recent Criticism of Middlemarch

Summary: For my blog, I chose Lee R. Edwards’ “Women, Energy and Middlemarch,” which focuses on how energy is functional within the text. As the piece’s name implies, Edwards’ focus was on female characters, namely Rosamond and Dorothea. Eliot compares the two, not directly but through their origins and lifestyles. While Dorothea has the majority of her author’s sympathy, and seems destined for great things, ultimately she “falls in” with what’s expected of women in her time period: marriage and a home life. Edwards finds this to be a waste of potential, much like Henry James did in the contemporary criticisms.

Analysis: The roles of women in Victorian society were extremely narrow. They had a limited range of professions available to them, and by and large were expected to be housewives. Of course, the heroines in a number of literature from that time - Dorothea, Mary Barton, or even Emma from the novel that shares her name - broke this mold. They were free thinkers, dreamers, and had great expectations (pun intended). Yet, for all the glorious setup she has and the future that we expect, Dorothea falls short.

Edwards is appreciative of the fact that she can both love Dorothea and hate Rosamond as genuine women, not as a list of cliches. Of the latter in particular, she says:

“I thought I had found a heroine worthy of my hate, one who was condemned not for her sexuality, but for her weakness, vanity and evil, ethical categories which, in the book at least, suspended sexual definition” (624).

As we discussed in class a few weeks ago, many heroines are still dependent upon the men in their lives to enable them - in other words, they’re not truly independent, as we’d like to believe. In Dorothea, we’re originally presented a character who has lofty dreams and quite possibly the capability to see them realized. In the end, though, she settles for that which most other women of her time do: wifehood, motherhood, and presumably a quaint little neighborhood. The spark of freedom and individuality that we first come to appreciate her for, is stamped out. Instead, her new husband, the layabout Will Ladislaw, gets to live Dorothea’s dreams out for her. As an audience, we feel cheated.

I glanced through a couple of the other criticisms before settling on Edwards’, which I did because I enjoy discussion on gender roles. One of the earlier ones, though, emphasized the “fullness” of Eliot’s writing - how every little detail is realized with great care and subtlety. Thus, it’s insulting to both Eliot and Dorothea to say that Dorothea’s fall from grace is an oversight. I’m also not knowledgeable enough with Eliot’s work to say that it seems uncharacteristic, though Edwards and I clearly weren’t the only ones disappointed.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that for all its strengths and promise, Middlemarch fails to break conventional gender norms in any lasting way. Even Rosamond, whose goals are much simpler than Dorothea’s, can only achieve them through her husband.

The contemporary criticisms of the book all reiterate that the entire literary world was anticipating it. It’s a shame that it failed to convey the message we, and her other readers, were hoping for.

(Also I don't know why the end of my text always turns grey. There's no visible formatting difference on my end.)

Blog #3 - Middlemarch

Summary: I read the first 15 pages or so, encompassing a great number of letters and other small publications. Throughout each of them, one theme was very consistent, and this was Eliot’s unwavering optimism and genuine care for other humans. Many of her letters express a great joy simply at being contacted, while others contain a great deal of sympathy for the recipients or their mutual acquaintances. I think this surplus of caring is also present in Eliot’s writing, such as in the characters of Lydgate and Dorothea, and it’s ultimately not at all hard to imagine the novelist as the penman here. That is, there is no divorcing of feelings or presentation from one text to the other.

Analysis: Eliot herself says, in “The Natural History of German Life,” that “the greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.” She goes on to say how others, such as clergymen or farmers, may observe what life is truly like, but fail to properly convey this in actions or in words. It is the artists, Eliot claims, who are responsible for sparking some emotional reaction with an audience. Therefore, her “job” as a novelist is a fitting one, since she desperately wants to tell the stories of the people. Not just any people; not just the lower-class or middle class, but everyone. Recounting a story told by her aunt, Eliot explains how “Adam Bede” came to be, and the night of prayer, followed by an execution, that inspired it. It was the “great feeling” with which her aunt told the story that affected Eliot so deeply and caused the story to stick in her mind.

Clearly, Eliot is an author interested in both the good and bad of humanity, and especially where the two come together.

Preceding the explanation of “Adam Bede” is an excerpt from Amos Barton, who is apparently a rather unscrupulous reverend. While the details of his flaws aren’t touched upon, Eliot appears to be addressing a critic, inviting her to peruse different literature instead. She says, to summarize, that she isn’t interested in portraying an inaccurate depiction of the man, especially since “so very large a majority of [the critic’s] fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp.” In other words, she’s writing about the common man - who is generally far from ideal.

Ultimately, in both her novels and in her everyday communication, Eliot has a devotion to portraying humanity as it actually exists. She takes care to not demonize high society and, while she sympathizes with them, refrains from glorifying the lower-class. She’s acutely aware of the faults in both strata, and takes care to portray them accurately. Still, good and bad, Eliot maintains a deep and unrelenting admiration for people in general, and taking great care to express her appreciation for those who are close to her. It’s the sensitivity that, in my opinion, sets her writing aside from her contemporaries, whose words often get bogged down by unnecessary sentiment and superfluous description (a lot like what I’m doing now).

Blog 2

Summary: For this blog, I chose to focus on Graham Handley's "Notes on Echoes and Epigraphs," as well as John Lucas' piece, "Carson's Murder and the Inadequacy of Hope." As could be surmised from the latter title, the death of Harry Carson was a prominent theme throughout both - Handley also chose to focus on it. Handley analyzed the epigraphs - the quotes which preceded each chapter - and their origin as well as their relationship to the chapter as a whole. In particular, he focuses on the one that alludes to a poem called The Ancient Mariner, and that piece's connection to John Barton. Lucas prefers to write about Carson's death, which cannot be written about without mentioning Barton.

Analysis: Handley begins by citing Elizabeth Gaskell when the author called John Barton central to the novel. She says that he was "the character around whom all the others formed themselves," and her "hero." In short, he was the character who could have or should have been viewed as the paragon within the book. We as readers generally appreciate his actions, and at the end, have a large amount of sympathy for the dying man. Handley points this out as well. One strong similarity between The Ancient Mariner and the character of John Barton is how they both "tell their tale" to one whom they have wronged.*
Lucas, in his piece, sees Barton as less admirable. Lucas accuses Gaskell of overt political tendencies aligning with "liberalism," and states that they sully the book's overall quality. After making note of the same Gaskell quote, wherein she aligned herself with John Barton, Lucas goes on to write about how the murder was "set up" to make the reader sympathize with Barton. Additionally, he credits the inclusion of the murder at all to close-mindedness no the part of Gaskell, saying that she can not "simplify a complexity which has become too terrific for her to accept consciously." He is describing the fear of violence among the upper-classes, realized fictitiously by John Barton.
The reason that I find these analyses of John Barton interesting returns to the question we discussed in class. That is, "what's the solution?" We talked of Gaskell identifying problems but not offering any way to make them better. I wonder if we could see J. Barton's actions as her potential solution. I'm hesitant to assume that that was her intent, because it would be too subtle and also uncharacteristic (given what little we know of her and the context of the rest of the book). However, she does state (in a roundabout way) that she approves of Barton's actions and hopes that the reader will sympathize. Ultimately, while I don't think Mary Barton was intended to be a call-to-arms, I think it's interesting that one could reasonably interpret it as such, given the right context.

*This is my interpretation of what occurred in the poem. I haven't read it, only picked up on the similarities that the author pointed out.

Blog One

Summary:
I looked at John Forster’s review in Examiner (1848), an unsigned review from Prospective Review (1849), and the unsigned review from British Quarterly (1849) for my blog. The first of these praises the book warmly, though from the beginning, contextualizes itself based upon the author’s gender. Forster remarks that Gaskell does a good job of calling attention to the lower class, but does “not affect to offer any solution of a problem involving so such misery” (367). Conversely, the Quarterly chastises Gaskell’s (at the time anonymous) attention to the poor, as the reviewer believes her description to be too “one-sided” and not at all fair to the groups she attempts to criticize. Lastly, in the Prospective Review, the reviewer is overall quite taken with Gaskell’s novel and especially the way it’s presented, complimenting the prose and even comparing it to verse. The praise is tempered by the highlighting of a couple inconsistencies, but ultimately, the author says they don’t detract too heavily from the work as a whole.

Analysis:

What I find most interesting is the dichotomy between the reviewers’ acceptance of Gaskell’s portrayal of the lower class. While Forster and the Prospective find it sympathetic and heart-tugging, the Quarterly thought the text was inaccurate and biased. While the author’s sympathies are expected to show, the reviewer cited key details that differed from the events that actually inspired them.

One example is the death of Harry Carson, modeled after that of Thomas Ashton. Details of the events, such as the location and specifics of the weapon, are too similar to be coincidence, yet different enough as to be aggravating to some contemporary audiences.

The aspect of this that I find intriguing is the authorial decision behind it. Obviously, Gaskell knew that her readers would find and point out the similarities between the events. Therefore, I’m curious as to what motivated her to do it anyway. When trying to build sympathy for the aggressors in this situation, it seems to me as if it would be best to not exonerate a situation in which they’re the less sympathetic group. To clarify, when it will be obvious where the inspiration for a scene came from, why change the motivations so strongly? In my opinion, this could devalue the author’s portrayal of other parts.

In class, we discussed how reading was one of the main pastimes of the middle-class. Therefore, it can be assumed that a large percentage of Gaskell’s readership was part of neither demographic from the novel, and should thus have a relatively unbiased opinion of what goes on therein. Still, the Prospective is quick to clarify that the book is not a political novel, and thus it can’t be seen as a call-to-arms. So, what then was its purpose? Obviously more than simple entertainment.

Ultimately, I think the purpose of Mary Barton was to raise awareness, but not necessarily to fix things. After all, like Forster said, there’s not even a solution presented. I just find it perplexing that a book which is, for all intents and purposes, an exposition on the lives of the lower-class should be so selectively honest. It makes sense from a propaganda perspective, but still, the novel feels like more than that. Maybe it’s intended to be a political book after all.